To The Interns I Couldn't Hire

[pinterface]

For the first time in my career, I recently got to sit in the hiring chair. My current employer let me look for a Software Engineering Intern. (With a little luck, I'm hoping to repeat the process for a senior level developer in the near future.)

I learned a lot, very quickly, doing that (a biggie: actually write down a list of questions to ask, don't just wing it—with my apologies to the very first person I interviewed, as I did not do a good job interviewing you), but this post is not about those lessons learned. This post is for all the people I had to send a rejection letter to. In my opinion, all of the people I interviewed were smart and capable of doing the job; actually picking one was a tough choice.

While our chosen field of computer programming offers amazing opportunities, finding work can be difficult¹, so don't despair. Here are some general tips to help you find work, and become a better developer.

Caveat: These are all filtered through my path as a developer, which absolutely does not match yours. The most obvious and major difference being I did not go to college. Props on going for the degree!

Finding Work

Give Talks

Local user groups—such as DSM Web Geeks, Pyowa, DSMJS, Iowa Ruby Brigade, CIALUG, and so forth in the Des Moines area—are always desperate for talks, as are larger conferences such as Iowa Code Camp. Too many people are terrified of speaking, thinking they need to be an expert, but that's just not true. The perspective you bring as a newbie, showing us all something you've learned, is both incredibly valuable, and woefully under-represented. It's also an effective way to catch the eye of a hiring manager or recruiter.

Giving talks will help you become a better communicator, which is a vitally important part of being on a team.

Contribute to Open Source

I learned a ton in my early days by contributing to open source projects. If you can find a project you care about, with a community of smart, patient people willing to help guide you, contributing to existing projects will help make you a better programmer, and give you things you can point at to say: I did that.

Contributing to open source will help you get better at revision control (e.g., git), reading code, and accepting feedback.

Develop Your Network

Getting your foot in the door of a place is a lot easier if you already know somebody on the inside. Be friendly, hobnob with other developers (e.g., at local dev groups), and stay in touch with people.

I've spent large chunks of my career as a lone developer and am a natural shut-in, so this is one area I regularly fail at.

Expand Your Mind

While learning the Framework Du Jour or a specific technology will help you be more employable in the short term, a solid foundation of knowledge will help you throughout your career, enabling you to pick up framework and language specifics more quickly, and to see the similarities with things which have come before.

While it'd be difficult to point you to the books that helped shape me as an early developer—in part because books like "QBasic For Dummies" and Laura Lemay's "Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 21 Days" would be a tad anachronistic at this point (though it appears there is a more modern version of the latter)—I can at least point you to some that have shaped me as a more intermediate developer.

How to Design Programs

This book is a gentle introduction to programming. It's a solid look at programming starting from zero. While you're almost certainly beyond it skill-wise already, I've been skimming through it lately and find the way it frames things can be helpfully clarifying.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

This was the textbook for an MIT course of the same name for a long time, and takes you from basic functions to meta-circular evaluators. Depending on what you've been exposed to already, it may well cover a gamut from "yeah, duh", to blowing your mind. Also freely available online as a textbook, and video lectures.

Practical Common Lisp

Common Lisp is a really fascinating language, and can open your mind to possibilities you likely haven't imagined. It certainly did for me! As just two examples: multiple dispatch and the condition system are among the things I sorely miss in other languages. Also available freely online.

Coders at Work

This book is a series of interviews with influential developers. It's an interesting foray into the minds and experiences of people who have ventured down the path of software development you are just now beginning to embark upon. This one isn't freely available, but it is a fascinating read, in my opinion.

Admittedly, that list reflects a heavy Lisp heritage. Lisp has had a heavy impact on me and the way I think about programs, but many languages can fall under the category of "mind-expanding". You're likely already familiar with Java, which covers the space of modern, standard object-oriented design. Some other design spaces you may want to explore, if you haven't already:

• A purely functional language. Purely functional code is often easier to understand and test than OO code, and you'll see its influence across a broad spectrum of languages. A good way to explore this space is through Haskell, which is a very mathy language—you could easily get lost in monads and category theory—, if you're into that sort of thing.
• Different concurrency models. Erlang's actor-based concurrency model is fascinating, and often much better suited to problem domains than thinking about lower-level things like threads and mutexes.

Sadly, none of these things are likely to make you more employable on paper—a sad reality of how we evaluate developers today—but they will make you better at the job itself.

Be Well-Rounded

It took me entirely too long to learn, but there is more to life than slinging code, so don't forget to do things that aren't programming. Take an improv class, learn some ballroom dancing, learn about user experience (UX). Whatever interests you.

1. ⌃I am amazingly terrible at interviews, to the point where I've spent years in between jobs, and the jobs I've gotten are often in spite of my interview. I totally get how frustrating it is to be rejected.